Keeping food warm is one of the most important parts of putting together a meal. When you’re cooking a large meal or a meal with a few different components or dishes, it can be hard to keep everything warm.
If your food gets cold before you are ready to eat it, the food won’t be as enjoyable. Beyond that, food can go bad or grow bacteria if it cools down too much so you’ll want to be extra sure that you keep your food at the right temperature until you eat.
You probably can’t plan the cook times for everything to be done at the same time as all the other dishes. It can be easy enough to approximate times but you can’t always predict when all of the food will be ready.
Plus, if your kitchen is smaller or if you are cooking a lot of different things, you might not have space to cook everything at once. That’s why it’s so important to know how to keep eggs warm, so it’s one less thing that you have to worry about when cooking a meal.
Before you leave your eggs out, make sure that you are only leaving them out for under two hours. If you leave the eggs out for over two hours, even if you are heating them, they can start to develop bacteria.
If you eat eggs that have been sitting out, you can risk getting salmonella.
1 – Use Tin Foil
Tin foil is great for keeping food at a good temperature. The metal in tin foil will reflect any heat that the food puts off, acting as insulation. Make sure that as soon as you are done cooking the eggs, you place the tin foil around whatever container they are in.
You should make sure to take the eggs out of what you’ve cooked them in so that they do not continue to cook past the point that they are done. Ovens and pans don’t lose heat immediately after you turn off the stove so the eggs will continue to cook until the container they cooked in loses heat.
Using tin foil as a cover will also trap in moisture so the eggs that you are trying to keep warm will not dry out as they sit.
Tin foil is a thin sheet, so it will only trap heat for a small amount of time. If you are planning on leaving out the food for longer than thirty minutes, you should consider other ways to keep it warm as the tin foil might not be able to trap the heat for that long.
2 – Warm up a Plate
This is especially important in the winter when your house might be colder. The plates and dishes you store in your house will also be colder than usual because they aren’t getting heat from the room. If you put warm eggs on a cool plate, the eggs will lose heat quickly.
A great way to fix this problem is to warm up the plate before you put eggs on it. Warming up plates is very easy and there are a few different ways that you can do it.
The easiest way to warm up a plate is to put it in the microwave. Microwave the plates for about thirty seconds, depending on how strong your microwave is. Before you take the plates out of the microwave, test how hot they are with your fingers.
If they are still cold, microwave them for a few seconds longer. If they are too hot, make sure that you let them rest for a few moments before you hold them.
Putting eggs on a warm plate is also a great idea to do before you start eating. If you warm up the plates you will be eating off of before you put eggs (or any other food) on them, the food will not cool down when it touches the cold plate.
Having a warm plate will not keep the eggs warm for very long but if you are going to eat the eggs soon, it is a great idea of how to keep them warm for a few minutes longer after they are done cooking.
3 – Keep Them in the Oven
If you’ve used an oven to cook eggs, then you could always just leave them in the oven until you are ready to eat them.
A lot of ovens have temperatures that won’t continue to cook the eggs too much and you could leave your oven on the lowest temperature for a while before you are ready to eat the eggs. Don’t take them out of the oven when you are done cooking; just cover them and let them sit in the oven.
If you are worried about overcooking your eggs by leaving them in the oven, try to undercook them by about a minute when the oven is at the higher temperature. Then lower the temperature as far as it will go, and the eggs will be ready to eat when you are.
You could also turn the oven off entirely and let the eggs sit in the hot oven as it cools down. This will still keep the eggs warm for a long time and you likely won’t have to worry about them getting cold.
Just make sure that you don’t leave your eggs in the oven for too long because they could become dry, even if you cover them with a lid or tin foil.
4 – How to Keep Scrambled Eggs Warm
If you’re serving scrambled eggs, you’re going to want to keep them warm until you are ready to eat. This is especially true if you’re serving eggs to a large group of people. Scrambled eggs tend to dry out quickly.
If you need to keep them warm, a good way to do it is with a double boiler. To do this, you’ll need to have a pan to cook your eggs in, as well as a saucepan to boil water in. Put water in the sauce pan and turn on the heat.
Start cooking your eggs when the water in the sauce pan is just starting to simmer. This way, by the time that you are done cooking the scrambled eggs, the water in the sauce pan will be boiling.
When your eggs are cooked and the water in the sauce pan is boiling, you can place the pan you cooked the scrambled eggs in over the top of the saucepan with the boiling water.
The steam will help keep the eggs from drying out and it will also help to keep them warmer without overcooking them.
5 – Cook Eggs in a Crock Pot
A crock pot might not be the first thing you think of when you want to cook eggs, but it is a great way to keep them warm for longer!
Once your eggs are finished cooking, leave the crock pot on a low temperature so that they stay warm but do not keep cooking. Leave the lid on the crock pot so that the eggs don’t dry out and so that heat has less room to escape.
If you don’t want to cook eggs in a crock pot, it can still be a great way to keep already-cooked eggs warm. If you have any kind of cooked eggs, such as hard boiled eggs or scrambled eggs, you can add them to a warm crock pot.
Keep the lid on, just as you would if you had cooked the eggs in the crock pot. This way, they will stay warm for a long time. Crock pots are very good at keeping an even temperature so the eggs won’t burn at the bottom of the crock pot.
If you serve eggs out of a crock pot, the crock pot will keep them warm as people remove portions from it. This is great if you have a lot of eggs for a gathering such as a potluck or a family reunion.
As people line up to get their food, the crock pot will keep the eggs warm until the last person gets to them.
Be Careful with Leaving Eggs Out
As mentioned before, you should never leave your eggs out for longer than two hours. This also applies to uncooked eggs. There is an increasingly high chance that the eggs will develop harmful bacteria if left out for more than two hours.
Sometimes it can be easy to forget newly purchased eggs on your counter overnight instead of putting them in the fridge. These eggs will have to be thrown away because they have been sitting out for way too long.
Eggs sold in US supermarkets are not shelf-stable because they have been washed, which takes away the protective coating that allows eggs to be able to stay good unrefrigerated.
The eggs are washed to make sure that any bacteria or dirt that could be harmful on the outside of the shell is gone. However, this causes extra risk in leaving eggs out for long periods of time.
I have two Associate’s degrees, one in Medical Assisting and the other in Computer Technician, and I am roughly five classes from a bachelor’s degree. Though I never ended up working in the medical field, I have five and a half years of experience in IT. I recently became a stay-at-home mom to my two young boys, and I’m so excited to start this adventure with them! In my spare time, I love to bake and read pretty much anything I can get my hands on.